THE BUBONIC PLAGUE. 581 



Samuel I, Chapter 5, paragraphs 6, 9). The latter especially deals with 

 the plague which attacked the Philistines after they took the ark. 

 The role of rats in the dissemination of the disease is, as some believe, 

 apparently referred to in the trespass offering of "five golden emerods 

 and five golden mice." The return of the ark, together with this 

 trespass offering, brought also the plague, "because they had looked into 

 the ark of the Lord, even He smote of the people fifty thousand and 

 threescore and ten men." Poussin's painting of this Philistine plague, 

 exhibited in the Louvre, shows several dead rats on the streets. It is 

 evident that the susceptibility of the rat to the plague had been noticed 

 even at this early date. The plague of boils visited upon the Egyptians 

 as related in Exodus (Chapter 9, paragraphs 9 and 10) has also been 

 taken to indicate the pest of to-day, but neither of these scriptural refer- 

 ences can be said to be sufficiently definite. 



The Attic plague, which ravaged the Peloponnesus 430 years before 

 Christ, has been accurately described by an eye-witness, the historian 

 Thucydides. His narration may be considered the earliest exact record 

 of an epidemic. Like all the great epidemics of subsequent ages, it was 

 ushered in by the overcrowding, the misery and the famine consequent 

 upon prolonged wars. The combustible material was there, and all 

 that was necessary was the spark to begin the work of death and dev- 

 astation. It is noteworthy that the origin of the pest was traced 

 by Thucydides to Egypt or Ethiopia, from whence it spread gradually 

 overland to Asia Minor and thence by boat to Athens. The nature 

 of this first great historic epidemic is and will remain uncertain. There 

 are those who consider the Attic pestilence as one of bubonic plague, but 

 the fact that in the very careful description of the disease no mention 

 is made of buboes and the statement that death occurred from the 

 seventh to the ninth day would indicate that the disease was something 

 else. Buboes are characteristic, it is true, of the plague, but it should be 

 remembered that outbreaks of the pneumonic form, with little or no 

 glandular enlargement, are not uncommon. Death, however, in the 

 case of plague is very common on the second or third day, and is less 

 liable to occur in more protracted cases. These facts lead to the com- 

 monly accepted belief that the Attic pest was not the bubonic plague. 

 It may have been typhus fever, possibly smallpox. 



The great pestilence which devastated Rome and its dependencies 

 in 166, Anno Domini, is known as the plague of Antoninus or of Galen. 

 This prolonged epidemic was brought to Rome by the returning legions 

 from Seleucia. It was not characterized by buboes, and it is very 

 probable that it was largely smallpox. On the other hand, the plague 

 of Saint Cyprian, which prevailed from 251 to 266 Anno Domini, may 

 have been partly bubonic in nature, since it prevailed during the fall 

 and winter months and ceased during the hot summer. The disease 



